A specialist in North Korean studies, activist and feminist. That is how the Czech media describe Nina Špitálníková, a student of Oral and Contemporary History at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University. Her book Witnessing Life in the DPRK (2020) became a bestseller and won the Magnesia Litera Award in the category of journalism.

Last Thursday, Charles University hosted the long-awaited Women in Science seminar, examining conditions of female experts in the Czech scientific and research environments. Invited speakers discussed both opportunities and barriers and as well as what needs to change.

Stunning landscapes, diverse in languages, home to different cultural traditions: all that and more are the Caucasus bridging Western Asia and Eastern Europe. The region has long been the focus of Faculty of Arts’ Associate Professor Petra Košťálová.

Lucie Bankovská Motlová teaches at the Dept. of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the Third Faculty of Medicine at Charles University. She is outspoken about her field, how it can help patients live regular lives and gives valuable advice on how to maintain good mental health during the pandemic. 

Kateřina Chládková is one of the few researchers in the world who study the earliest stages of language acquisition, which means she is often in contact with babies – even in the maternity ward. Her aim is to find out how we learn to speak from the very first moments of life.

f the novel coronavirus had never hit, Ruth Tachezy would have been doing other things: applying for funding, heading a national reference laboratory, and publishing. She would have been helping her students at the Faculty of Science and would have been preparing for an upcoming conference and a mountaineering vacation. Instead, she opted to tackle a higher “mountain”.